A few years ago, the Detroit Red Wings were moving up in the Stanley Cup finals. I was walking home from the grocery store and I happened to be wearing my Red Wings jersey. A grumpy guy growled “Did you just buy that because they are doing well in the playoffs?”
I smiled at him, but rather than answering, I turned my back. The number 91 and the name Federov in white on red.
It had been years since Sergei Federov had played for the Wings, so no, I hadn’t just bought that jersey. And there was a story behind it…one I didn’t bother to share with grumps…
I remember watching a game between the Detroit Red Wings and the Colorado Avalanche. Federov was brand new and Colorado blessed him with a welcome to the club initiation.
Of course, the Wings repaid the favor, acknowledging that boys will be boys and it’s all in good fun, right?
What impressed me – what inspired me – was that Federov picked himself up, shook it off, and went back out…game after game. He had taken what I, as a spectator, thought was a brutal beating, and yet you’d never know by the way he gracefully skated across the ice…as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
I’ve read plenty of inspirational quotes, motivational and self-help books, but when it comes to the type of inspiration that keeps the fire in my heart going…it’s the personally selected nuggets that find a permanent home with me.
We were at Kennedy Space Center recently. At one point we watched old film footage of a JFK speech.
“We do not do these things because they are easy,” he stated. “We do them because they are hard.”
In one moment, the anxiety that had been gripping me over my nonfiction books Angels and Engineers Volumes I and II washed away. Who was I? I remembered…
We then watched other films and the words of astronauts and the men who worked in the program dovetailed JFK’s message. I bought a little trinket from the gift store. It’s small and sits on a shelf in my office. The size of the object isn’t what matters…it’s what it represents. Inspiration in a way that hits home like no other…
I know plenty of real life heroes from whom I take my inspiration – everyday people doing everyday work and yet finding time to hand out precious inspiration that feeds my soul.
I urge people to find the inspirations that mean something to them and find a way to hold onto it. Write yourself a note and stick it in your wallet. Design something that is a physical manifestation of it. Buy something if that’s what it takes. And whenever you need that fuel for the fire burning within…
let it fill your tank!
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